{"id":292636,"date":"2011-08-07T04:02:36","date_gmt":"2011-08-07T02:02:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/living-the-charism-spiritual-life-and-prayer\/"},"modified":"2024-05-13T20:43:30","modified_gmt":"2024-05-13T18:43:30","slug":"living-the-charism-spiritual-life-and-prayer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/living-the-charism-spiritual-life-and-prayer\/","title":{"rendered":"Living the Charism: Spiritual Life and Prayer"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\" The first young woman to follow Chiara Lubich was Natalia Dallapiccola.<\/strong> She once shared the following episode: \u201cOne evening, we gathered around a table (the only piece of furniture that survived). Since there was no electricity, Chiara was reading by the light of a candle: \u201cThis is my command: Love each other as I have loved you. Everyone will know that you are my disciples by the love you have for each other.\u201d <\/em> Natalia continued: \u201cThose words fell like gasoline on fire. We wanted to know what Jesus\u2019 deepest desire was, a word that would immediately reveal precisely what he wanted of us. And here was the summarizing phrase, the great discovery of our search.\u201d <\/em>She concludes: \u201cWe said to each other: \u2018And so, before going out to school, to the office, to buy something at the market; before going out to help the poor, or even to pray \u2013 we must first have among ourselves the same love that Jesus has for us. This is what He wants.\u2019\u201d <\/em> <\/em>

\"\"<\/a>

Photo \u00a9Adriana Avellaneda<\/p><\/div> The life of prayer is the life blood for anyone who adheres to the spirituality of unity. The relationship with God is the basis of every action. But this life of prayer is also profoundly communitarian: from the songs that we sing at our shared vacations in the 1950\u2019s in the mountains of Trent, to the modern-day musicals of Gen Verde and Gen Rosso, from our heartfelt participation in the liturgy to morning and evening prayers around the world, and in all the actions through which the Focolari actualize their \u201cspirituality of communion\u201d. This communion is not exhausted in intimate prayer, but is also reflected in the personal and social life. A higher measure of justice is born, an absolute for legality, as the Focolare\u2019s \u201cCommunion and Law\u201d branch would like to demonstrate.   Chiara Lubich writes: We have an interior life and an exterior life. Each blossoms from the other; each is the root of the other; each is the foliage of the other, on the tree of our life. <\/em> The interior life is nourished by the external life. Inasmuch as I penetrate into the soul of my neighbor, so much do I penetrate into God who is within me; inasmuch as I penetrate into God who is within me, so much do I penetrate into my neighbor. <\/em> God-me-neighbour: There\u2019s an entire world here, an entire kingdom. . . <\/em> (. . .)<\/em> The more our love for neighbour grows, the more our love for God is increased.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A prayer life which is both personal and communitarian is the life blood for anyone who wishes to live the Gospel life of the Focolare. The relationship with God is the basis for everything.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-292636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-non-categorizzato"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292636","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=292636"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292636\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}